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Andrea Long Chu

Andrea Long Chu (born 1992) is an American writer and critic. Chu has written for such publications as n+1 and The New York Times, and various academic journals including Differences, Women & Performance, and Transgender Studies Quarterly.[1] Chu's first book, Females, was published in 2019 by Verso Books and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. In 2021, she joined the staff at New York magazine as a book critic.[2]

Andrea Long Chu
Born1992 (age 31–32)
Chapel Hill, North Carolina, U.S.
OccupationWriter
LanguageEnglish
Education
Period2018–present
SubjectLiterary criticism; trans rights
Notable works
  • "On Liking Women"
  • Females
  • "Freedom of Sex"
Website
www.andrealongchu.com

Chu received the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2023 for "book reviews that scrutinize authors as well as their works, using multiple cultural lenses to explore some of society's most fraught topics."[3] She is a transgender woman.[4]

Early life and education

Chu was born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina in 1992. Her father was finishing a medical residency at the University of North Carolina and her mother was in graduate school at the time of her birth.[5] Her father is of Chinese descent.[6] A few years later, Chu moved with her family to Asheville, North Carolina. Although she described Asheville as a "very hippy dippy kind of place," Chu said that she was "raised pretty Christian."[5][7] She attended a small Christian school. Her family belonged to a conservative Presbyterian church. Chu described her childhood as "saturated" with Christianity.[5]

Chu graduated with a B.A. in Literature from Duke University and an M.A. in Comparative Literature from New York University.[8][8][9]

Career

Chu is the book critic for New York magazine and has previously written for The New Yorker, Bookforum and n+1.[10] To date, she has written critical reviews of books by Hanya Yanagihara, Maggie Nelson, Octavia E. Butler, Ottessa Moshfegh, and The Velveteen Rabbit.[11][12] Chu has also contributed op-eds to The New York Times, including "My New Vagina Won't Make Me Happy."[13] In 2021, Chu published a full-length profile on writer and model Emily Ratajkowski for The New York Times Magazine and has maintained a friendship with her since.[14]

"On Liking Women"

In 2018, Chu published "On Liking Women" in n+1 magazine. The essay considers Chu's own gender transition, with Chu writing: "I have never been able to differentiate liking women from wanting to be like them."[15] It discusses Chu's fascination with Valerie Solanas' SCUM Manifesto and contrasts her attitude about her gender transition with previous iterations of feminist thought.

Writer Sandy Stone praised Chu's essay for "launching 'the second wave' of trans studies."[2] Noah Zazanis, in The New Inquiry, expressed ambivalence about "On Liking Women" from a transmasculine perspective, writing: "If turning your back on manhood is an ultimately feminist act, what are we to make of the decision to become a man?"[16] Amia Srinivasan noted in the London Review of Books that the essay "threatens to bolster the argument made by anti-trans feminists: that trans women equate, and conflate, womanhood with the trappings of traditional femininity, thereby strengthening the hand of patriarchy".[17] Chu responded to Srinivasan's comments in a dialogue with Anastasia Berg that was published in The Point.[18]

Females

Chu's first book Females was published in 2019 by Verso Books. The book was selected as a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Nonfiction.[19] In the Los Angeles Review of Books, poet Kay Gabriel wrote that in Females, "Chu makes a claim about what she calls an ontological, or an existential, condition. Being female, in her account, is a subject position outside and against politics."[20]

"Freedom of Sex"

Chu wrote the March 2024 cover story "Freedom of Sex" for New York magazine. In the essay, Chu argues that "in principle, everyone should have access to sex-changing medical care, regardless of age, gender identity, social environment, or psychiatric history... For now, parents must learn to treat their kids as what they are: human beings capable of freedom."[21][22]

Fellow New York writer Jonathan Chait disagreed with Chu's rights-based argument while praising the essay's "honesty" for acknowledging the different sides of the debate.[23] The Atlantic staff writer Helen Lewis criticized Chu's "full-throttle libertarianism," calling it "about as popular as the case for letting 9-year-olds get nose jobs."[24]

Personal life

In a 2018 interview, Chu said that she was in a relationship with a "wonderful cis woman" who was very helpful in preparing for Chu's sex reassignment surgery.[25] Discussing the relationship, Chu stated, "[h]eterosexuality is so much better when there aren't any men in the equation."[25]

Bibliography

  • Authority: Essays. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2025. ISBN 978-0-374-60033-4.
  • Females (2019). Verso. ISBN 9781788737371

Essays

References

  1. ^ "Andrea Long Chu Joins New York Magazine as Book Critic". New York Press Room. October 27, 2021. Retrieved March 29, 2022.
  2. ^ a b Blanchard 2018.
  3. ^ "Here are the winners of the 2023 Pulitzer Prizes". NPR. May 8, 2023.
  4. ^ Thom 2018.
  5. ^ a b c O'Brien 2018, p. 3.
  6. ^ Shapiro, Lila (October 16, 2019). "Andrea Long Chu Wants More". Vulture. Archived from the original on May 28, 2024. Retrieved May 28, 2021.
  7. ^ O'Brien 2018, p. 4.
  8. ^ a b O'Brien 2018, p. 8.
  9. ^ "Chu, Andrea Long". as.nyu.edu. Retrieved April 26, 2023.
  10. ^ The Pulitzer Prizes. "Andrea Long Chu of New York magazine". www.pulitzer.org. Retrieved June 13, 2023.
  11. ^ Chu, Andrea Long (January 12, 2022). "Hanya's Boys". Vulture. Archived from the original on April 30, 2023. Retrieved May 10, 2023.
  12. ^ Chu, Andrea Long (September 7, 2021). "You've Heard This One Before". Vulture. Archived from the original on November 25, 2022. Retrieved May 10, 2023.
  13. ^ Chu 2018c.
  14. ^ Chu, Andrea Long (November 8, 2021). "The Emily Ratajkowski You'll Never See". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved May 11, 2023.
  15. ^ Chu 2018a.
  16. ^ Zazanis, Noah (December 24, 2019). "On Hating Men (And Becoming One Anyway)". The New Inquiry. Retrieved January 1, 2023.
  17. ^ Srinivasan 2018.
  18. ^ Chu & Berg 2018d.
  19. ^ Lorusso 2019.
  20. ^ Gabriel, Kay (November 25, 2019). "The Limits of the Bit". Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved May 4, 2020.
  21. ^ Chu, Andrea Long (March 11, 2024). "Freedom of Sex". New York. Archived from the original on March 21, 2024. Retrieved March 22, 2024.
  22. ^ Mantha, Priyanka (March 11, 2024). "On the Cover: Andrea Long Chu's Moral Case for the Right of Anybody, at Any Age, to Change Their Sex". New York. Archived from the original on March 11, 2024. Retrieved March 22, 2024.
  23. ^ Chait, Jonathan (March 16, 2024). "Freedom of Sex: A Liberal Response". New York. Archived from the original on March 19, 2024. Retrieved March 22, 2024.
  24. ^ Lewis, Helen (March 19, 2024). "The Worst Argument for Youth Transition". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on March 20, 2024. Retrieved March 22, 2024.
  25. ^ a b O'Brien 2018, p. 25.

Sources

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